Bridget Jones's Baby Read Free Page A

yourself a boyfriend yet?”
    I managed to ease my way through without incident by nodding and smiling enigmatically. Hurled myself at the bar thinking nothing could possibly get worse, and found myself standing next to Mark Darcy.
    —
    The conversation went as follows.
    MARK DARCY : Hello.
    ME : Hello.
    MARK DARCY : How are you?
    ME : (
strange voice
) I am very well thank you. How are you?
    MARK DARCY : I am fine.
    ME : So am I.
    MARK DARCY : Good.
    ME : Yes.
    MARK DARCY : Good.
    ME : Yes.
    MARK DARCY : Well, goodbye then.
    ME : Yes. Goodbye, then.
    —
    We both turned to separate barmen.
    “Glass of white wine, please,” I said.
    “Vodka martini,” I heard Mark say.
    “Big, big glass.”
    “Actually make that a treble.”
    “Very big.”
    “With a whisky chaser.”
    —
    We stood, incredibly awkwardly with our backs to each other. Then, the drunken fathers started on Mark.
    “Darcyyyyy­yyyyy­! How the devil are you, you old bastard. What you doing turning up late like that in a chopper?”
    “Well, I was actually, um, in a fairly important Foreign Office meeting.”
    The barman handed me the wine, I took a giant slurp and started to make my escape.
    “How’s single life treating you then, Darcy?” said Cosmo.
    I froze. Single life?
    “Dark horse, aren’t you? Got a new totty yet?”
    “Well, I’m hardly…” Mark began.
    “What’s the matter with you, you miserable old sod? Johnny Forrester was barely out of the divorce court before he was inundated with totties. Smothered in them. Out every night.”
    Took another huge slurp of wine, just as Mark muttered, “Yes, I assume you have no idea of the reality of being single at my stage in life. Everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to push one at some deluded woman-of-a-certain-age, looking for a knight on a charger to solve all their problems: financial, physical and otherwise. Anyway, must be going. Yup. Must be off.”
    —
    Staggered off round a corner and leaned against the wall, mind reeling. Single? Had he split up from Natasha? “Woman-of-a-certain-age?” Was he talking about ME???? Did he think the christening was some sort of weird set-up? Was he LEAVING? I was bristling with confusion and indignation and on the point of texting Shazzer, when Magda appeared, looking pretty drunk herself now. “Bridget!” she said. “Mark is divorced. Divorced! He’s left the stick insect.”
    “I just heard.”
    “We have to go outside and discuss this
immediately.
”
    As Magda and I squeezed past the bar, the drunken fathers were still on full autowitter.
    “What about Bridget? Never understood why those two didn’t get sprogged up.”
    “They were together long enough.”
    “Was she just too old or did he just not have the soldiers?”
    —
    Out in the garden, we found a large collection of children, none of whom were climbing trees, playing tag, doing three-legged races, etc., in a childlike manner: all of whom were attached to electronic devices. Magda went storming up to them: “Zac! Off! Now! I said forty-five minutes.”
    “But I HAVEN’T FINISHED THIS LEVELLLLLLLLL!”
    “Off! Now! All of you!” yelled Magda, drunkenly lunging at the devices.
    “It’s just SO FUCKING UNFAIR!”
    “I’m going to lose my CROWNS!”
    “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR EFFING CROWNS—GIVE ME THAT THING!”
    Unbridled mayhem broke out.
    “QUIET!” roared a voice. “Potter, Roebuck, stop! Stand in line!”
    The boys, startled, obviously thinking they were back at school, stood to attention.
    “Right,” said Mark, striding in front of them as if he was in court. “Disgraceful behaviour. Act like men. Ten times round the lake, all of you. First one back”—he took out his iPhone—“gets Angry Birds for ten minutes. Off you go. Run. FAST.”
    The big boys all tore off like racehorses. The little children all burst into tears.
    Mark looked nonplussed for a moment. “Right. Jolly good,” he said, and headed back into the hotel.
    —
    Archie, one of